Great-Heart

-when thou shall enlarge my heart.’ — David.

IN Sabbath, the 12th December 1886, I heard the late Canon Liddon preach a sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral, in which he classed Oliver Cromwell with Alexander the Sixth and with Richard the Third. I had taken my estimate of the great Protector’s character largely from Carlyle’s famous book, and you can judge with what feelings I heard the canon’s comparison. And, besides, I had been wont to think of the Protector as having entered largely into John Bunynn’s portrait of Great-heart, the pilgrim guide. And the researches and the judgments of Dr. Gardiner have only gone to convince me, the eloquent canon notwithstanding, that Bunyan could not have chosen a better contemporary groundwork for his Great-heart than just the great Puritan soldier. Cromwell’s ’ mental struggles before his conversion, his life-long ’ searchings of heart, his ’ utter absence of vindictiveness, his unequalled capacity for ‘seeing into the heart of a situation, and his own ’ all-embracing hospitality of heart ’ — all have gone to reassure me that my first guess as to Bunyan’s employment of e Protector’s matchless personality and services

ad not been so far astray. And the oftener I reade noble history of Great-heart, the better I seem

hear, beating behind his fine figure, by far the satest heart that ever ruled over the realm of igland.

1. The first time that we catch a glimpse of reat-heart’s weather-beaten and sword-seamed ce is when ne is taking a stolen look out of the indow at Mr. Fearing, who is conducting himself ore like a chicken than a man around the Intereter’s door. And from that moment till Mr. earing shouted ‘Grace reigns! ’ as he cleared the st river, never sportsman surely stalked a startled er so patiently and so skilfully and so successfully

Great-heart circumvented that chicken-hearted Igrim. ‘At last I looked out of the window, and erceiving a man to be up and down about the Dor, I went out to him and asked him what he

>; but, poor man, the water stood in his eyes.

I perceived what he wanted. I went in, therere, and told it in the house, and we showed the ing to our Lord. So He sent me out again to itreat him to come in; but I dare say I had hard ork to do it.’ Great-heart’s whole account of Mr.

aring always brings the water to my eyes also.

is indeed a delicious piece of English prose. If were a professor of belles letlres instead of what I n, I would compel all my students, under pain ot stication, to get those three or four classical pages ’ heart till they could neither perpetrate nor lerate bad English any more. This camp-fire le, told by an old soldier, about a troublesome young recruit and all his adventures, touches, surely, the high-water mark of sweet and undented English. Great-heart was not the first soldier who could handle both the sword and the pen, and he has not been the last. But not Caesar and not Napier themselves ever handled those two instruments better.

2. Great-heart had just returned to his Master’s house from having seen Mr. Fearing safely through all his troubles and well over the river, when, behold, another caravan of pilgrims is ready for his convoy. For Great-heart, you must know, was the Interpreter’s armed servant. When at any time Great-heart was off duty, which in those days was but seldom, he took up his quarters again in the Interpreter’s house. As he says himself, he came back from the river-side only to look out of the Interpreter’s window to see if there was any more work on the way for him to do. And, as good luck would have it, as has been said, the guide was just come back from his adventures with Mr. Fearing when a pilgrim party, than which he had never seen one more to his mind, was introduced to him by his Master, the Interpreter. ‘The Interpreter,’ so we read at this point, ‘then called for a man-servant of his, one Great-heart, and bid him take sword, and helmet, and shield, and take these, my daughters,’ said he, ‘and conduct them to the house called Beautiful, at which place they will rest next. So he took his weapons and went before them, and the Interpreter said, God-speed.’

3. Now I saw in my dream that they went on, and Great-heart went before them, so they came to

;he place where Christian’s burden fell off his back ind tumbled into a sepulchre. Here, then, they nade a pause, and here also they blessed God. Now,’ said Christiana, ‘it comes to my mind what was said to us at the gate; to wit, that we should 1 lave pardon by word and by deed. What it is to wave pardon by deed, Mr. Great-heart, I suppose •ou know; wherefore, if you please, let us hear our discourse thereof, ‘So then, to speak to the uestion, said Great-heart. You have all heard bout the ’ question-day ’ at Highland communions. Tiat day is so called because questions that have sen in the minds of ’ the men ’ in connection ith doctrine and with experience are on that y set forth, debated out, and solved by much editation and prayer; age, saintliness, doctrinal d experimental reading, and personal experience 11 making their contribution to the solution of the estion in hand. Just such a question, then, and ndled in such a manner, was that question which hiled the way and cheated the toil till the pilgrims ,me to the House Beautiful. The great doctrinal id experimental Puritans, with Hooker at their sad, put forth their full strength and laid out eir finest work just on this same question that ristiana gave out at the place, somewhat ascendg, upon which stood a cross, and a little below, the bottom, a sepulchre. But not the great pmment on The Galatians itself, next to the Holyble as it is, as most fit for a wounded conscience; nor that perfect mass of purest gold, The arned Discourse of Justification, nor anything of that kind known to me, is for one moment, to compare in beauty, in tenderness, in eloquence, in scriptural depth, and in scriptural simplicity with Great-heart’s noble resolution of Christiana’s question which he made on the way from the Interpreter’s house to the House Beautiful. ‘This is brave! ’ exclaimed that mother in Israel, when the guide had come to an end. ‘Methinks it makes my heart to bleed to think that He should bleed for me. O Thou loving One! O Thou blessed One! Thou deservest to have me, for Thou hast bought me. No marvel that this made the water to stand in my husband’s eyes, and that it made him trudge so nimbly on. O Mercy, that thy father and thy mother were here; yea, and Mrs. Timorous too! Nay, I wish now with all my heart that here was Madam Wanton too. Surely, surely their hearts would be affected here! ‘Promise me to read at home Great-heart’s discourse on the Righteousness of Christ, and you will thank me for having exacted the promise.

The incongruity of a soldier handling such questions, and especially in such a style, has stumbled some of John Bunyan’s fault-finding readers. The same incongruity stumbled ‘the Honourable Colonel Hacker, at Peebles or elsewhere, to whom Cromwell sent these from Edinburgh on the 25th December 1650 — ‘But indeed I was not satisfied with your last speech to me about Empson, that he was a better preacher than fighter or soldier — or words to that effect. Truly, I think that he that prays and preaches best will fight best. I know nothing that will give like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will; id I bless God to see any in this army able and lling to impart the knowledge they have for e good of others. I pray you receive Captain npson lovingly: I dare assure you he is a good in and a good officer; I would we had no worse.’ 4. ‘Will you not go in and stay till morning? ’ d the porter to Great-heart, at the gate of e House Beautiful. ‘No, said the guide; ‘I I return to my lord to-night.” O sir! ’ cried ristiana and Mercy, ‘we know not how to be ling you should leave us in our pilgrimage. Oh t we might have your company till our journey’s I.’ Then said James, the youngest of the boys, ray be persuaded to go with us and help us, se we are so weak and the way so dangerous it is.” I am at my lord’s commandment, said «1 eat-heart. ‘If he shall allow me to be your ide quite through, I shall willingly wait upon i. But here you failed at first; for when he 1 me come thus far with you, then you should re begged me of him to have gone quite through h you, and he would have granted your request, wever, at present, I must withdraw, and so, j )d Christiana, Mercy, and my brave children, i eu!” Help lost for want of asking for, is our hor’s condemnatory comment on the margin at t s point in the history. And there is not a single re in my history, or in yours, my brethren, on ich the same marginal lament is not written. lat help we would have had on our Lord’s •mise if we had but taken the trouble to ask for And what help we once had, and have now b, just because when we had it we did not ask for a continuance of it! ‘No, said Great-heart to the porter, and to the two women, and to James — ‘No, I will return to my lord to-night. I am at my lord’s commandment; only, if he shall still allot me I shall willingly wait upon you.’

Now, what with the House Beautiful, so full of the most delightful company; what with music in the house and music in the heart; what with Mr. Brisk’s courtship of Mercy, Matthew’s illness, Mr. Skill’s cure of the sick man, and what not — a whole month passed by like a clay in that so happy house. But at last Christiana and Mercy signified it to those of the house that it was time for them to be up and going. Then said Joseph to his mother, ‘It is convenient that you send back to the house of Mr. Interpreter to pray him to grant that Mr. Great-heart should be sent to us that he may be our conductor the rest of our way.” Good boy,’ said she, ‘I had almost forgot.’ So she drew up a petition and prayed Mr. Watchful the porter to send it by some fit man to her good friend, Mr. Interpreter; who, when it was come and he had seen the contents of the petition, said to the messenger, ‘Go, tell them that I will send him.’... Now, about this time one knocked at the door. So the porter opened, and, behold, Mr. Great-heart was there! But when he came in, what joy was there! Then said Mr. Great-heart to the two women, ‘My lord has sent each of you a bottle of wine, and also some parched corn, together with a couple of pomegranates. He has also sent the boys some figs and raisins to refresh you on your way.’ ‘The weak may sometimes call the strong to prayers, I read again in the margin opposite the mention of Joseph’s name. Not that I am strong, and not that she is weak, but one of my people I spent an hour with last afternoon whom you would to a certainty have called weak had you seen her and her surrounding, — she so called me to prayer that I had to hurry home and go straight to it. And all last night and all this morning I have had as many pomegranates as I could eat and as much wine as I could drink. Yes; you attend to what the weakest will sometimes say to you, and they will often put you on the way to get Great-heart back again with a load of wines and fruits and corn on his shoulder to refresh you on your journey. ‘Good boy! ’ said Christiana to Joseph her youngest son, ‘Good boy! I had almost forgot! ’

5. When old Mr. Honest began to nod after the good supper that Gaius mine host gave to the pilgrims, ‘What, sir,’ cried Great-heart, ’ you begin to be drowsy; come, rub up; now here ’s a riddle for you.’ Then said Mr. Honest, ‘Let’s hear it.’ Then said Mr. Great-heart,

1 He that will kill, must first be overcome; Who live abroad would, first must die at home.’

‘Hah! ’ said Mr. Honest, ’ it is a hard one; hard to expound, and harder still to practise.’ Yes; this after-supper riddle of Mr. Great-heart is a hard one in both respects; and for this reason, because the learned and much experienced guide — learned with all that his lifelong quarters in the Interpreter’s House could teach him, and experienced with a lifetime’s accumulated experience of the pilgrim life — has put all his learning and all his life into these two mysterious lines. But old Honest, once he had sufficiently rubbed up his eyes and his intellects, gave the answer:

‘He first by grace must conquered be

That sin would mortify.
And who, that lives, would convince me,
Unto himself must die.’

Exactly; shrewd old Honest; you have hit off both Great-heart and his riddle too. You have dived into the deepest heart of the Interpreter’s man servant. ‘The magnanimous man’ was Aristotle’s masterpiece. That great teacher of mind and morals created for the Greek world their Great-heart. But, ‘thou must understand,’ says Bunyan to his readers, ’ that I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato. No; but to Paul, who taught Bunyan that what Aristotle calls magnanimity is really pride — taught him that, till there is far more of the Christian religion in those two doggerel lines at Gaius’s supper-table than there is in all The Ethics taken together. And it is only from a personal experience of the same life as that which the guide puts here into his riddle that any man’s proud heart will become really humble and thus really great, really enlarged, and of an all-embracing hospitality like Cromwell’s and Great-heart’s and John Bunyan’s own. Would you, then, become a Great -heart too? And would you be employed in your day as they were employed in their day? Then expound to yourself, and practise, and follow out that deep riddle with which Great-heart so woke up old Honest:

‘He that will kill, must first be overcome; Who live abroad would, first must die at home.

6. Great-heart again and again at the riverside, Great-heart sending pilgrim after pilgrim over the river with rapture, and he himself still summoned to turn his back on the Celestial City, and to retrace his steps through the land of Beulah, through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and through the Valley of Humiliation, and back to the Interpreter’s house to take on another and another and another convoy of fresh pilgrims,, and his own abundant entrance still put off and never to come, — our hearts bleed for poor Great-heart. Back and forward, back and forward, year after year, this noble soul uncomplainingly goes. And, ever as he waves his hand to another pilgrim entering with trumpets within the gates, he salutes his next pilgrim charge with the brave words: ‘Yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two: having a desire to depart and to be with Christ. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you, for your furtherance and joy of faith by my coming to you again.’ If Great-heart could not ‘usher himself out of this life’ along with Christiana, and Mercy, and Mr. Honest, and Standfast, and Valiaiit-for-truth — if he had still to toil back and bleed his way up again at the head of another happy band of pilgrims — well, after all is said, what had the Celestial City itself to give to Great-heart better than such blessed work? With every such returning journey he got a more and more enlarged, detached, hospitable, and Christ-like heart, and the King’s palace in very glory itself had nothing better in store for this soldier-guide than that. A nobler heaven Great-heart could not taste than he had already in himself, as he championed another and another pilgrim company from his Master’s earthly gate to his Master’s heavenly gate. Like Paul, his apostolic prototype, Great-heart sometimes vacillated just for a moment when he came a little too near heaven, and felt its magnificent and almost dissolving attractions full in his soul. You will see Great-heart’s mind staggering for a moment between rest and labour, between war and peace, between ‘Christ’ on earth and ‘Christ’ in heaven — you will see all that set forth with great sympathy and great ability in Principal Rainy’s new book on Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, and in the chapter entitled, The Apostle’s Choice between Living and Dying.

Then there came a summons for Mr. Standfast. At which he called to him Mr. Great-heart, and said unto him, ‘Sir, although it was not my hap to be much in your good company in the days of my pilgrimage, yet, since the time I knew you, you have been profitable to me. When I came from home I left behind me a wife and five small children. Let me entreat you, at your return (for I know that you will go and return to your master’s house in hopes that you may be a conductor to more of the holy pilgrims), that you send to my family and let them be acquainted with all that hath and shall happen to me. Tell them, moreover, of my happy arrival to this place, and of the present late blessed condition I am in, and so on for many other messages and charges.’ Yes, Mr. Standfast; very good. But I would have liked you on your deathbed much better if you had had a word to spare from yourself and your wife and your children for poor Great-heart himself, who had neither wife nor children, nor near hope of heaven, but only your trust and charge and many such-] ike trusts and charges to carry out when you are at home and free of all trust and all charge and all care. But yours is the way of all the pilgrims — so long, at least, as they are in this selfish life. Let them and their children only be well looked after, and they have not many thoughts or many words left for those who sweat and bleed to death for them and theirs. They lean on this and that Great-heart all their own way up, and then they leave their widows and children to lean on whatever Great-heart is sent to meet them; but it is not one pilgrim in ten who takes the thought or has the heart to send a message to Mr. Great-heart himself for his own consolation and support. I read that Mr. Ready-to-halt alone, good soul, had the good feeling to do it. He thanked Mr. Great-heart for his conduct and for his kindness, and so addressed himself to his journey. All the same, noble Great-heart! go on in thy magnanimous work. Take back all their errands. Seek out at any trouble all their wives and children. Embark again and again on all thy former battles and hardships for the good of other men. But be assured that all this thy labour is not in vain in thy Lord. Be well assured that not one drop of thy blood or thy sweat or thy tears shall fall to the ground on that day when they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. Go back, then, from thy well-earned rest, O brave 2 N

Great-heart! go back to thy waiting task. Put on again thy whole armour. Receive again, and again fulfil, thy Master’s commission, till He has no more commissions left for thy brave heart and thy bold hand to execute. And, one glorious day, while thou art still returning to thy task, it shall suddenly sound in thy dutiful ears: — ‘Well done! good and faithful servant! ‘And then thou too

1 Shalt hang thy trumpet in the hall
And study war no more.’